Hi all! I’m going to take a break from my usual advice-focused posts and talk a little about my personal life. As some of you know, I’ve been in recovery from BED for over a year. I followed an approach mainly based on intuitive eating self-help books, individual and group therapy (including CBT), and many of the tips I’ve discussed in this blog (getting rid of food guilt, putting weight loss on the backburner, and eating mindfully). My recovery isn’t based on willpower at all (because willpower is a limited resource), and I almost never have binge urges. Recovery isn’t always a smooth path, but it’s mostly been wonderful …
Until recently. I am now pregnant with my first child. And it has completely turned my eating and exercise habits upside down. Add to this a new, stressful job and making plans to start graduate school, and the result is a lot of craziness!
Pregnancy and morning sickness have really changed my eating habits in ways that I don’t really love—nothing sounds appealing, so I get little pleasure from eating these days, and I need to eat almost constantly to keep the sickness at bay, so I’m rarely hungry for actual meals. And I’m eating a lot less produce, and my exercise habits and social life have dwindled to almost nothing, thanks to near-constant nausea.
It bums me out, honestly! But I just keep reminding myself that my body is going through some crazy things right now—producing a human being!!—and I need to be patient and just listen to my body as best I can. It’s a gentle reminder to me to listen to my body’s needs, not what my mind THINKS I should need.
I think this is a lesson that can be applied to all of us: our bodies know best. Learning to quiet my mind and its incessant judgments about food and exercise (and everything else!!) was KEY to starting recovery, and I have to remember that it’s also key to continuing on my recovery path. And it’s a great reminder that circumstances change, and our bodies change for various reasons. I can’t control what my body is doing during pregnancy, and that’s such a frustrating thing to me … but I also think it’s a GREAT way of learning a very important lesson in letting go of that obsessive need for control.
I apologize if this post is rambling, but I am experiencing a little editing burnout these days (editing is my day job).? I wanted to give you all an update because I know I haven’t written in a while. And I wanted to share a snippet of what recovery is like—it really is about continually growing and learning about yourself—and when I am able to set aside that incessant need for control, I can admit that it’s a really beautiful thing.
How are you doing this fall (or spring, if you’re in the other hemisphere)? I’d love to hear from you.
(c) Hungry for Recovery – Read entire story here.